Invited Speakers |
Panel 1 第一讲
Keynote Speakers 主旨嘉宾 WANG Feng is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. A Guggenheim Fellow 2024, he has published widely on social and demographic changes in historical and contemporary China. For a decade and half, he was a co-organizer (with Gu Baochang) of a research team that carried out studies and advocated for lifting the one-child policy. CAI Yong is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His research focuses on fertility change, migration, and population policy in contemporary China, and on the social and institutional consequences of state population control and the transformation of China’s demographic regime. For over a decade he was a core member of the research team. GU Baochang is a Distinguished Researcher at the Center for Population and Development Policy Studies, Fudan University. He is one of China’s most influential demographers and a pioneering figure in fertility and population policy research. The first Western-trained Chinese scholar in demography to return to China, he played a central role over several decades in shaping scholarly and policy debates on China’s family planning system and its reform. Widely regarded as one of the most trusted advisors to policymakers on population issues, his research, policy work, and public engagement provided crucial empirical foundations and intellectual guidance for rethinking and ultimately ending the one-child policy. Moderators 主持人 SU Yang is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. His research examines political violence, revolution, and social movements, with a focus on China and the role of the state. Widely recognized for his award-winning books Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution and Deadly Decision in Beijing, his work provides powerful analyses of mass violence, protest, and state repression. Combining historical and contemporary perspectives with both ethnographic and quantitative methods, his scholarship offers critical insights into contentious politics in China and beyond. REN Bo is Deputy Managing Editor of Caixin Media, a China-based financial and business news media group. She covers public policy, including healthcare, education, social security and public welfare, among other areas. She was in charge of the reports on the epidemic of coronavirus from the very beginning in January 2020. Before joining Caixin Media in 2009, she worked successively at Sanlian Life Weekly and Caijing Magazine for 11 years and published several influential in-depth reports on rural development, housing and land policies. Under her current leadership, the Caixin social policy news team have published award-winning reports on social development and gained industry recognition for their social advocacy effects. Panel 2 第二讲 Keynote Speakers 主旨嘉宾 ZHAN Mei is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Irvine. Her research examines medical anthropology, science and technology studies, and globalization, with a focus on China. Her influential work Other-Worldly rethinks traditional Chinese medicine as a dynamic product of transnational encounters rather than a fixed tradition, highlighting how knowledge, identities, and practices are shaped across shifting global contexts. Through her scholarship, she offers a distinctive lens on how medicine, culture, and knowledge are continuously remade in a globalized world. HAN Shumeng is a Ph.D. candidate in modern Chinese history and science studies at the University of California, San Diego. She is broadly interested in the history of rural life in modern China, with particular attention to everyday practices and local knowledge. Her dissertation examines changes in wheat varieties and grassroots technological innovation in rural China from the 1930s to the 1980s. Her research has been supported by the ACLS, the OYCF–Chow Fellowship, and the Esherick-Ye Family Foundation. Her co-authored work has appeared in Law and History Review and won the 2025 Surrency Prize for the best article published in the journal that year. She was a recipient of the OYCF-Chow fellowship. YANG Yixue is a doctoral candidate in History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego, where she is completing her dissertation, “Global Threads: Gendered Production and Trade Institutions in China’s Silk Export Economy, 1949-1980.” Yixue specializes in interdisciplinary approaches to the histories of economy, environment, gender, and labor in modern China. Yixue is broadly interested in studying the everyday experiences of ordinary people during times of drastic social and political transformation. Her peer-reviewed article on the eye exercises practiced by millions of Chinese students has appeared on the East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine. She was a recipient of the OYCF-Chow fellowship. Moderators 主持人 LIU Chuncheng is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, jointly appointed in Sociology and Anthropology (CSSH) at Northeastern University. His research examines the politics of data, classification, and sociotechnical governance, with a focus on China. His work explores how systems that measure, evaluate, and categorize individuals—ranging from social credit systems to contact tracing and generative AI—reshape state power and everyday life. He was a recipient of the OYCF-Chow fellowship. | Panel 3 第三讲
Keynote Speakers 主旨嘉宾 CHEN Yong is a Professor of History and Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of California, Irvine. His research explores Chinese American history, transpacific migration, and the cultural and economic significance of food in American society. Widely recognized for his influential work Chop Suey, USA, he has illuminated how Chinese food became a central part of American culture while shaping broader conversations on immigration, identity, and globalization. Through his scholarship, public engagement, and museum collaborations, he has played a leading role in advancing the study of Asian American experiences and U.S.–China cultural connections. HU Ying is a Professor of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her research explores modern Chinese literature and culture, with a focus on translation, feminism, and intellectual history. Her work centers on the transformative period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, examining how women writers and thinkers engaged with profound political, cultural, and social change. Through her scholarship, she illuminates the cross-cultural dynamics of feminist thought, highlighting how ideas are translated, adapted, and contested across different historical and cultural contexts. LI Ji is John S. & Marilyn Long Professor of US-China Business and Law at UC Irvine School of Law. His research examines Chinese law, international business, and the interaction between legal systems in a global context. His scholarship focuses on how Chinese firms and institutions engage with U.S. and international legal regimes, as reflected in his books Clash of Capitalisms and Negotiating Legality. Bridging law and political economy, his work offers key insights into transnational legal dynamics and the evolving U.S.–China relationship. YUAN Yuan is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of law, with particular attention to the intersections among these fields. Trained at Yale University and having taught at NYU Shanghai and Virginia Commonwealth University, her work explores normative questions about law, governance, and justice in contemporary societies. Moderators 主持人 GUANG Lei is the So Family Executive Director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego, and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at San Diego State University. His research focuses on the Chinese state and society, political economy, and U.S.–China relations, with additional work on Indian politics and China–India relations. Through his scholarship and leadership, he has contributed significantly to advancing the study of China in a global and comparative perspective. HAN Zhuang is a Research Fellow at the LSE–Fudan Global Public Policy Hub in the Department of Social Policy. His research examines social inequality, labor, and youth marginalization in the context of China’s evolving digital economy. His work bridges sociology and public policy to understand how structural transformations reshape opportunity and social mobility. Panel 4 第四讲
WANG Zheng is Professor Emerita of Women’s and Gender Studies and History at the University of Michigan. A long-term academic activist promoting feminist scholarship and gender studies in China, she initiated the Women’s and Gender Studies Curriculum Development Project in China in 1999 and established the first inter-university women’s studies degree program (UM, Chinese University of Hong Kong and China Women’s University) in 2002; and was also the founder and co-director of the UM-Fudan Joint Institute for Gender Studies at Fudan University. LONG Yan is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of California Berkeley, and the incoming Co-Director of Berkeley Global Metropolitan Studies. She is a political sociologist whose research examines how globalization and China shape one another in areas such as public health, urban development, international organizations, gender, and technology. She is currently working on a book on urban governance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her scholarship has been widely recognized, earning 13 national and international awards, including the 2026 Joseph Levenson Prize. REN Bo is Deputy Managing Editor of Caixin Media, a China-based financial and business news media group. She covers public policy, including healthcare, education, social security and public welfare, among other areas. She was in charge of the reports on the epidemic of coronavirus from the very beginning in January 2020. Before joining Caixin Media in 2009, she worked successively at Sanlian Life Weekly and Caijing Magazine for 11 years and published several influential in-depth reports on rural development, housing and land policies. Under her current leadership, the Caixin social policy news team have published award-winning reports on social development and gained industry recognition for their social advocacy effects. Moderators 主持人 HOU Xiaoshuo is Professor of Sociology and Asian Studies and the Chair of the Sociology Department at Skidmore College. She studies the economy and development from sociological perspectives, using qualitative methods such as ethnography. Her research focuses on China’s experiences of post-socialist development. She received her BA in English from Nanjing University and her PhD in Sociology from Boston University. She is the author of Community Capitalism in China: The State, the Market, and Collectivism (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Her latest book is Young and Restless in China: Informal Economy, Gender, and the Precariat (Cambridge University Press, 2024). |
2026 Annual Meeting Program Committee
(by hosting organization and in order of last name)
OYCF
Xiaoshuo HOU 侯小硕, Professor of Sociology and Asian Studies, Skidmore College | OYCF Board Member
Yan LI 李艳, Secretary, OYCF Board
Yan LONG 龙彦, Associate Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley | OYCF Board Member
Junling MA 马俊陵, Chair, OYCF Board of Directors
Qianli WU 吴谦立, OYCF President
Zhuang HAN 韩壮, Research Fellow at the LSE–Fudan Global Public Policy Hub in the Department of Social Policy
UCI
Beijie Ann TANG 唐蓓洁, Director of the UC Irvine Long U.S.-China Institute
Feng WANG 王丰, Professor of Sociology, UC Irvine